How the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra picked its new music director

The Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra has just officially selected Maestro David Danzmayr as its next Music Director.  And a new era begins for the largest arts organization in the Chicago Southland.  Yet, even as we look forward to the great artistic experiences next season and for at least two seasons beyond, it is amazing for me to remember how we arrived at this wonderful moment. 

One person to whom the IPO must be ever grateful is Henry Fogel.  The present Dean of the Chicago College for the Performing Arts at Roosevelt University (and former president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and subsequently the President of the League of American Orchestras) was “instrumental” in guiding the IPO in its search for a new music director.

At the point of my assuming the presidency of the IPO Board in 2009, we on the Board had the sense that the IPO was not progressing in its mission of presenting the finest possible concerts and classical musical educational experiences for our diverse Chicago Southland.  In this world, if you’re not progressing, you’re almost certainly retrogressing.  In this regard, the IPO administration had wanted to get Henry involved as a consultant, but, even knowing how generous he was with his time with orchestras across the nation, we didn’t know how to effectively convince him to consider the IPO one of his reclamation projects.  As I was leaving my subdivision to travel to the hospital for Saturday rounds (I’m a doc), I heard just part of an offer on the WFMT pledge drive that ended with a statement like, “So if you want to have dinner with Henry Fogel and his wife, Fran, call now.”  I grabbed my cell phone and pledged en route—and won!

My wife, Marie, and I will never forget that dinner.  Being a music-degreed alumna of both undergraduate and graduate school at Roosevelt, Marie had plenty of reasons for engaging Henry’s conversation.  That is, she would have if she could have gotten me to shut up regarding the IPO.  (Actually, she effectively delivered a message to my shins a few times with her ballet-trained feet.)  Fortunately, Henry was very sympathetic and Fran was remarkably interested even though I suspect that she had been at several of these soirees-plus-entreaty and still found them more than diverting.  Henry gave me advice but, more important, agreed to speak with the IPO Board.  There, he clarified our thinking regarding our situation and soon the Board had the objective to find a new leader, a new music director.

Many orchestras across the globe (from at least four continents and maybe more) have pai Henry a substantial amount of money to organize and facilitate their music director searches.  We didn’t have a substantial amount of money.  But Henry gave us a “home-town discount and the search was started.  He reviewed our job notices and their placement in the appropriate sites.  And he predicted quite accurately, the number of applications we would receive which was about 165.  The Search Committee, lead by chair Bill Donne, had the task of pruning this list to the most promising candidates.

Almost any conductor in the US and beyond who wants to be considered for a conducting job in the US (and beyond) has submitted a video tape sample of their performances to Henry.  And Henry, when he was president of the League of American Orchestras, traveled the country to listen to many orchestras in concert.  Thus, it was rare that Henry didn’t have an opinion on one of our applicants.  However, there was one more advantage that Henry had—a network of connections to all the orchestra executives across the world.  When one of these executives, whom Henry respected greatly, said that he should strongly consider David Danzmayr, an assistant conductor for the  Royal Scottish National Orchestra, for the IPO job, Henry knew that this was a serious candidate.  So this unknown was vaulted to the “round of 45” top candidates. 

These top candidates were asked to submit recent videos of their performances, and three subcommittees of the Search Committee were formed to look at 15 videos each to recommend two or perhaps three candidates.  David’s video was in my subcommittee’s group.  I’ll have to tell you that I was skeptical that one could judge conductors by a video.  What if a conductor was a musical genius but wasn’t flashy on the podium?  What about the opposite—someone who had all the “moves” but who wouldn’t be able to inspire the IPO?  What if the orchestra was so good that they carried a mediocre conductor?  These are all valid questions.  But it is also valid that some conductors stood out on video and not because of mere balletic moves.

When I had my personal session with the 15 videos assigned to our subgroup, I invited Marie to watch with me.  She’s an actual conductor and musician.  (I’m just a music fanatic who might be duped.)  In any event, out of the 15 candidates, two of them had energy and musical authority that just jumped off the screen and David was one of them.  I still remember our “Wow!” reaction.  And the rest of our subcommittee, in email submitted votes agreed.  As you can well surmise, David had the same impression on the full committee.

But he also had to pass a screening interview process which was largely conducted by Ed Feingold who pulled out a lot of the standard business questions (“What is your greatest weakness?” etc.).  David was in the initial top four, and he stayed there.  Two of the most promising musicians didn’t get past this hurdle as the whole committee reviewed their responses so two others were moved up.  Yes, this was a top four because three of our candidates had already conducted the IPO by the 2010-2011 season through a selection process defined by the IPO Artistic Committee. Henry had felt that these three were all “Class A” conductors who didn’t have to conduct the orchestra again—they should be included in the final seven choices.  So the 165 candidates were really competing for only the four slots in the 2011-2012 season.

All our conductors gave fine concerts.  I remember audience member after audience member saying that they didn’t know how we could decide.  Yet, there were standouts.  The Search Committee, through Bill’s leadership, individually attended many of the rehearsals.  And while there were some great performances, a few were really magnificent, of course including David’s January 2012 all-Mendelssohn concert.  A few people questioned why the IPO “allowed” him to conduct all these basic standards—including the beloved Violin Concerto--and not give a more varied set of composers.  Actually, it wasn’t his exact choice. 

Each conductor was asked to submit five programs and then whittle that down to three.  It was the search committee that chose which programs the conductors would perform from those that the conductors had sent us.  After all, the 2011-2012 IPO season had to be a coherent, balanced season for our patrons--not just a series of conductor auditions.  (When I spoke to him later, David said that the all-Mendelssohn ranked third in his mind of his three submitted programs.) 

As you can remember, the audience submitted a final survey with comments.  The musicians and the rest of the IPO Search Committee submitted detailed questionnaire opinions.  As many may or may not know, musicians are a, ahem, fractious sort of people.  While their profession requires the highest level of cooperation and teamwork, this does not mean that they are prone to “Group Think.”  Au contraire.  (In this they may even have physicians beat, an impressive feat.)  Yet the positive scores that David achieved from the IPO musicians, in Henry’s opinion, were almost unprecedented.  (And David was the clear choice of the audience, too.)

The candidates went to receptions of Board members and donors.  They also had to be fed.  One great touch, and a great money saver for the IPO, was that the parents of Executive Director, Donica Van Voorhees, live in Flossmoor, but they leave during the winter months.  They were extraordinarily gracious (Thank you!) in allowing the guest conductors to stay in their comfy, cozy house during the whole concert week.  Since Marie and I live in Flossmoor, love to talk with conductors, (and love to eat at Freshstarts), we were able to dine with several conductor candidates.  And as persons, they all were brilliant and interesting. 

Finally, each candidate had to interview with the whole Search Committee, not only talking about music but organizational issues and leadership philosophy.  After all this, David was the Committee's choice, ultimately, the unanimous choice.

And it is extraordinarily encouraging that the “world” seems to be ratifying our choice, too.  After he had already been scheduled to conduct our January 2012 program, David was one of four finalists in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s First International Sir Georg Solti Conducting Competition.  Most recently this spring, he was a prize winner in the prestigious international Malko Competition for conductors in Copenhagen, Denmark.  If you think that the IPO music director search involves a rigorous selection process, just imagine what these international competitions entail.  Not 165 competitors--triple that!

In my imagination, I can see David as an international star in 10 years—but returning to his IPO launching pad throughout the years the way international star, Kent Nagano, continued his relationship with the Berkley Symphony long after he had major appointments.

But most of all, I’m looking forward to this up-coming season which holds keystone works of the repertory, like the Beethoven 9^th Symphony, the Brahms 2nd Symphony, the Tchaikovsky 5^th Symphony and Violin Concerto as well as works by Golijov, Britten, and Piston.  So welcome Maestro David Danzmayr!  It was a long journey to get here—but now the real adventure starts.